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There is no other option but to go Agile

Change is hard 🏋️‍♀️

We generally say we don’t have time to implement the new project management methodology. There is a lot to learn with the technology itself that we can’t afford to spend time in project management especially with the team. And anyways the project management we mostly consider as not billable so it never gets the importance.

But in today’s fast-paced world with ever-changing customer’s choices of buying the products, product owners have to be agile. In today’s competition, we can’t afford to make a product for years that customers don’t even want.

Customers are not what you think 💭

There is a huge myth around if I face the problem everyone facing it and this is the way we should solve it as I like it to have it that way. Very often we think most of the audience thinks, likes, believe the same as us.

A very simple example I heard to break that myth was, just open youtube and check the Top Trending videos. I am sure, out of 10 you will hardly like 2-3 videos. At least that always holds true for me. How can we consider that what we are making is the exact thing our audience needs.

Go small but what matters 🐣

That’s where the agile or an iterative model comes into the picture. We have to work on MVP first. The very first version solves the core problem, only with “must-have features”. With no fancy UI or no “nice-to-have features”. Release it to the initial set of users. From whom getting feedback is easy.

Analyze those feedback and plan the next release. Keep the next release cycle as low as possible 2 weeks to a month and release the update. This may not be best yet but a next step towards what customers needs.

During the cycle after doing the retrospective check if strategies need to be changed or if pivoting is needed. And do it if needed. There may misconceptions around the pivoting as well but we will try to address them in future articles.

Experience speaks 👨‍💼

In my 8+ years of experience working with various startups in most of the startups, we have found that the product after 3-4 years is altogether different than then what we initially thought. If we made releases and addressed customer’s needs that they have survived. If not they got failed.

Agile, Scrum, MVP - all these concepts are not new. But still, many startups and agencies developing products with the waterfall model. It needs to be changed to succeed.